


eclipses everything

by queenundisputed



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 20:28:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenundisputed/pseuds/queenundisputed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killian does the right thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	eclipses everything

Baelfire is in Neverland. _Baelfire_ is in _Neverland_. The thought sits at the forefront of his mind and slowly swells until it crowds almost everything else out and away. 

He’s still reeling from her kiss. It was the kind of kiss that made a man ache for a woman. The kind of kiss that is not easy to forget because the phantom press of lips tingles long after she walks away. It was the kiss he had been waiting for, craving since he set eyes on her for the first time. 

And yet even it is eclipsed by the revelation that Baelfire lives, that he is here within reach once again. 

The father of Emma’s son. The boy who Milah bore. The boy who had thrown Killian’s redemption into the sea and watched it drown. 

Baelfire. 

He clenches and unclenches his fist, standing just as Pan left him in the forest. He knows what Pan wants, or at least, he believes he does. Pan desires discord. He reveals just enough to create chaos where before there was none. He is the master of half truths, half lies, and just enough for you to get a taste. 

Part of him wants to allow Pan’s scheme to run its course. If he keeps Emma in the dark, he will have her a little while longer before her Neal comes back to sweep her off her feet. And Neal will sweep darling Emma off her feet, Hook has absolutely no doubt about that. He sees it in her eyes every time she turns, again, to the walls covered in drawings and scribbles made by the hand of the boy she loved first. 

If he waits and keeps quiet about what he knows, then perhaps he will have a chance to steal that gaze for himself. He is, after all, a pirate. 

But he remembers the little pain in his heart—his heart that has been dead and cold for so long, fueled only by revenge—when David had called him the same. Though he knows it’s the truth, he is slowly realizing that a pirate is not all he wants to be. Not now. 

(Perhaps he never truly wanted to be a pirate to begin with.)

“Bloody hell,” he whispers, to the empty air. 

He’s going to do the right thing, and even the thought feels strange in his head. The same way it did when he turned his ship around and when he dragged David to the mountaintop and healed him. One day it will feel normal again, doing the right thing. If he keeps practicing. 

So he searches for Emma, finds her near the fire, and she only looks at him out of the corner of her eye when he sits next to her. 

“What do you want now?” she asks. 

“Pan came calling,” he replies, keeping his voice as light as he possibly can and turning his hook to watch the firelight dance over its metal surface. 

“What did he want?”

“For me to do the wrong thing,” he says, and he turns his face toward her, toward the light. “But I’m not interested in making more deals with the devil, Emma.”

He waits for a moment, lets her decide to look back at him, to look into his eyes, and to use her ability to spot a lie. He knows she won’t see one. 

“Okay,” she says simply, and he knows, if nothing else, she believes him. He ignores the part of him that was expecting more. She's tired, worn down from the weight of Neverland already, and he cannot force her to meet expectations she isn’t ready for yet.

“He parted with more information. Something that, I think, will lift your spirits,” he continues because if he doesn’t do it now, he won’t have the strength to do it later. Being the hero takes far more willpower than being the villain, the pirate, and he’s had far more practice with the easier of the two. 

“Oh yeah?” she asks, but she’s rolling her eyes and using a stick to poke the fire. He reaches out and takes the hand holding the stick, tugs it closer to him. She resists for all of a minute, and inwardly he cheers at the victory as he brings her hand to his lips and places a chaste kiss on her knuckles. 

“Please tell me Peter Pan did not ask you to give me a kiss for him. I don’t think I could deal with that,” she says, retreating and hiding behind her sarcasm and wit. It’s frustrating, but he likes that about her. There’s never a dull moment in conversation with Emma Swan. 

He chuckles, “No, darling. That was from me. It might be the last time I have the chance.”

“What do you mean?”

He takes a deep breath, steels himself, and then looks her straight in the eye. “Baelfire is alive. He’s in Neverland.”

She stares at him for a moment, her mouth falling open slightly, and her eyes glazing over. He shouldn’t find it so attractive. 

“That isn’t funny,” she says, finally, as she snatches her hand out of his grasp and uses her stick to jab viciously at the fire. 

He watches the embers as they dance through the air, and says, “It was not an attempt to make you laugh, love.”

“Neal is...Neal is _dead_. You can’t just go around telling people he isn’t. Because he is, and nothing is gonna change that. You hear me?” 

She’s still staring into the fire, her shoulders hunched like she wants to curl into herself to get away. If he thought it would be welcome, he would offer his own brand of comfort, but no touch, no kind word, and certainly no alcohol he knows of will quench the pain inside her. This he knows from experience. 

“I assure you, I would not have thought to tell you if I did not think Pan were telling the truth,” he says, keeping his hands to himself and his voice low. 

“Why would you believe him? All he’s done from the beginning is find ways to make us suffer. Why should now be any different?” she snaps at him, throwing her stick into the fire, and standing as if to leave him and his voice behind. 

“Because, Swan, it was me he was trying to make suffer this time. It was me he appeared to. Me that he told. All in the hope that I would, in turn, refuse to tell you. That I would be ruled by my selfish tendencies once again,” he says, standing now too and towering over her as much as he can. He won’t let her run from this. It means too much for them both. 

She stares at the ground—and he is getting tired of looking and looking at her without her looking back; can she not spare him a crumb even?—for a moment, her face a mask of shadow and turmoil. 

“Did he tell you where Neal was?” she asks.

“He was not quite that generous, darling, but I have my suspicions,” he says, and he holds his breath, waiting for her to look up at him. 

When she does, her mouth is set, and he can see resolve in her eyes. That is the Emma Swan he knows. That is the Emma Swan that he...wants, possibly needs. 

(That is the Emma Swan he will never have.)

“Come on then; let’s go get him,” she says, and she holds out her hand to him. He can’t quite believe she’s offering. So he takes her hand like a gift and watches as she barely notices his wonder. 

Because Baelfire is in Neverland, and that thought eclipses everything else. Especially him.


End file.
